It's easier to get here with www.ramblingmoose.com but hey, that's cool!

Picture

I was the weird kid that really truly enjoyed these. I learned early that the Redder The Better because there was more flavor on them.

So I went looking, found lots of recipes on how to make this, and ended up tweaking to get this recipe.

It’s the powder that you sprinkle on potato chips to turn them into BBQ Chips after putting it in the oven.

I have been dipping tortilla chips into it and knocking off the “excess” the last couple days and, Yeah!, pretty darn good too!

This is a smallish recipe, and can be scaled up easily if you find you like it.

I bet it could also go into a cheese shaker or a salt shaker for use as a condiment on the table.

I know I like this on a baked potato, and the little bit I need isn’t enough for me to worry about the calorie count, or whatever else is in it.

Yes, there is salt and brown sugar in the recipe. Depending on how you use it, it’s possible that the salt can be left out.

You know… season to taste? Especially good on bland foods.

Oh one last thing that I noticed when I put that pic together? It’s a great way to use up your old or out of date spices. If you look at that pic really closely… you will notice that the date stamped on top of the Onion Powder is 2013. It’s now 2017.

When someone near to me came home from London, he brought me something that I appreciated very much.

I just did not know how much?

I mean… this is apparently a “Thing” in Britain.

By which I mean “Supersized” chocolate bars.

I am laughing at the display on my room organizer right now. This is … ridiculous.

But it is a “thing” there, and the reality is that there is the concept of a reasonable amount of any given food to eat.

Really, this is huge! The sheer size of it has me laughing.

Way up at the top of the picture is a “standard” single serving Hershey’s Chocolate bar. It’s not my favorite chocolate by a long shot, but here in the land of Big Food and Cheap Food, it’s what we think of as a single serving.

Granted, it is 220 calories which is a bit large for some of my more petite friends to have in one sitting. I have a friend who is 1/2 my size and weight, and that 1.55 ounce, or 43 gram serving is what should be about all she should have of candy or dessert all day.

My being twice that size I’m maintaining weight with twice that amount per day. I lose a pound all week, gain it back on the weekend, and I have since High School. It’s in balance. My doctor had no complaints about my weight or my fitness level at all.

Rule of thumb is calories are to be balanced from 30% Fat, 30% Carb, 40% Protein.

Training Diets are 1 gram protein per pound of weight. Lower Fat and Carbs as needed. Good luck with that.

Nutrition guidelines aside… that little bar is a “single serving”.

Now, since what we get here in Los Estados Unidos with the name Cadbury doesn’t taste right to me, I have a standing order with anyone going to England to bring back Cadbury Chocolates.

It used to be that Cadbury was made by Hershey by license. It also does not taste right to me, nor the same.

Close, but not quite. Kit Kats are the same too for me. I could be wrong.

Could be the water, or that the chocolate is different. I don’t know. When I have a Cadbury branded chocolate here I don’t think it tastes “right” to me. My opinion. I’d just rather get Cadbury imported from Old Blighty than walk down the block to the rather excellent candy store and get a bar there.

Maybe I should. Just not today.

That and my licorice allsorts. Bassetts. They’re stale if I get them locally, but amazing if bought at the airport at Gatwick just before you leave.

Then there’s that bar of Cadbury Fruit and Nut in the middle. It is 300 grams. 10.58 ounces.

And don’t get me on Your Country Should Go Metric. We did, it’s just we have a translation layer there so it makes things easier for us. All our units of measurements are defined as a multiple of Grams or Liters or what have you.

Maybe you shouldn’t have a license plate for a candy bar.

Anyway, at 495 calories per 100 grams, the whole bar is 1485 calories. At 212 calories per serving it serves 7.

Seven. And that is the middle sized bar.

When I first saw that bar I thought it was insanely sized. Why? Because I know people who would attempt to eat the whole thing in one sitting.

Don’t do that. Nearly a day’s budget of calories for a tall woman in one bar of chocolate is insane. Just Don’t Do it.

Well, at least that’s the math if I can read the British Nutrition Label. They suggest a more reasonable serving size of a little more than an ounce.

While people in Britain are smaller than in some parts of the US – Buddy, you folks are catching up.

But that fruit and nut bar that I truly enjoyed massively was a shock when I saw it. Ok, “Gift Sized” was what I called it.

What about that plank of Dairy Milk in the box. On the bottom of the picture.

Come on Cadbury, you’re kidding me! 800 Grams?

Yes, I know, Portion Control. I’ve been doing portion control for so long that I can estimate calories in my head – and do.

800 Grams. 28.22 Ounces.

When I saw it I asked “What the hell is that thing, is it really chocolate?”

Yep! I am laughing at the massive bounty of chocolate that that is.

Real good chocolate too. The way a Cadbury Chocolate Bar should taste.

And yes, I will enjoy it, completely. Every last gram. But I will “Do The Math”.

For 100 grams, it is 530 calories.

For the whole bar that is an amazing 4240 Calories.

Serving size according to Cadbury is a measly 25 grams or 132 calories.

So a giant 800 gram bar serves 32?

I’m laughing at that.

No wonder why the NHS is moving to disallow hospitals to sell these on premises. I would say that the heft and size of the thing, it could be used as a weapon.

So I guess the whole supersizing thing that we went through here, they did in Britain, differently.

Good luck folks, I’m still laughing at the bar being so bloody large!

At least I have until December 2018 to finish all this stuff!

I’ll go with a roughly 200 calorie serving and enjoy each bit. By the time I finish all this stuff, this “table leveler” block of chocolate, someone else will be going back to England and coming back with a ludicrously large bar of chocolate again.

It will be appreciated.

Six Chunks at a time. I just want to watch the world burn and have a wee bit more.

I don’t actually get into the Jeep often. 15 year old car with only 46,000 miles on it. So when I do go for a drive, there has to be a reason, and I almost always really enjoy it. It’s a fun vehicle to drive, and I’ll get there. You may not, but I will.

The occasion was that I got to visit one of my favorite people, my godmother Kathie. She’s a prime example of love makes a family. The godparent tradition came from our childhood, and we both have found different spiritual paths. But we stayed in touch via her moves to Florida, my much later move, and many years.

Plus she’s great company.

I got a message in my email asking if I wanted to come up and enjoy a lunch in the restaurant. Sure! Great! When?

When became a rainy trip up. We’ve had a lot of random smallish rain storms. Fun. I’ve got the right car for it. 30 inch rubber donuts, no lifts, it’s a Jeep not a Mudder. My theory is that 10 mpg is no fun, and while the car is rated 15, I drive gently and get 18 city, 22 Highway.

Not a Prius. But I don’t fit in a Prius.

After watching people do stupid things on the back roads, and one clown spin out, I got there.

We chatted, I added her printer to her Mac, and we went out to look at the Preserve. Hurricane Irma took out a few trees, including a Honeybell Orange that I will miss. But she did point out the Ginger plant. We’ve got one too that I just planted, so I was interested to see it in bloom.

You know that motto, Always Bring A Camera?

She lifted a fallen leaf to show me the blooms and right there, sitting on the flower was this wee little Frog.

So there it is. We still don’t know if that is an Ornamental or Culinary Ginger, but it is a pretty thing. The flowers merely smell Floral instead of smelling like a Gingerbread. That may be what I will get out back by the shed.

Lizards, literally everywhere. I had heard there were a lot of them around, but coming from a “temperate” climate like South Jersey, I never really believed that they existed. You just don’t see a lizard staring back at you from a Pin Oak tree in Cherry Hill, NJ.

Here, I walk to the front door and there are lizards sunning themselves on my driveway watching me back through the glass.

I’ve seen Muscovy Ducks on my front porch more times than I care to count, and I’ve taken to inviting them to leave. They’re way too messy to be a good house guest.

They are perfectly fine on the water and near it, but the one night that I stepped onto my porch after sunset and found myself interrupting some seventeen of them making funky Duck Love and smelling the pungent aroma of what happens when you startle them, they needed to move on.

Did you know a bird will lighten the load before flying by making a poop?

Some other places have alligators in their swimming pool. Key West, Florida has Chickens. I suspect they are fine until they get to be a bit too populous, but people brought them there to begin with. If you don’t want chickens, help yourself to the eggs they leave under your shrubs.

I wonder if they will trade a few chickens for some ducks?

They came there because their many generation removed grandparents were used in fighting. That’s not at all allowed these days, but some did escape and settled in.

So I did get to see the chicken cross the road, even if I am still not quite sure why it did.

You end up with wading birds deciding that it is time to perch on your Jeep. It doesn’t happen too often, they aren’t out there every day. Luckily they are some of the more shy creatures out there. If you get anywhere near them they fly off.

I have seen these Snowy Egrets, or what ever they are called, walk across lawns in long herds like something out of a Disney Movie. They’re also the reason why I don’t tell the landscapers to spray the yard.

We get so many of them here that the grubs I see them going after are kept well under control. Along with the Black Racer snakes in some rare occasions.

But we do get quite a few visitors.

In the morning, being awakened by the song birds that show up in my bottlebrush tree is a normal happening.

Some of them are louder than others. And some are more insistent than others.

It’s also why I have a habit of waking early, or at least an explanation.

Go on outside and have a look around. The sheer volume of things that I see in my own little yard here in suburbia always has me wondering just what am I missing.

I’ve been told that there are scorpions here, and if I leave my boots outside for some strange reason, I bang them on the pavement to make sure I don’t bring any hitchhikers in.

I’ve found way too many lizards to count. They do keep the spiders at bay though and that’s a welcome aside.

After all, a Banana Spider in the house at the size of a Volkswagen is a but of a shock. For a while I was fortunate. My old windows had another predator that took up residence in one small nook. Then the house was upgraded to Impact Resistant glass. Hurricane Glass they call it. But it also took the nook away and my frog was gone.

I do kind of miss the frogs after all that is said and done.

Really, Frogs, since I saw three there the day before the nook was taken away a couple years back. Funny how things like that end up in unexpected places.

At the moment though, there are the butterflies. Sure, I have all of those creatures cohabiting with me, the dog, the parrot, and the humans in this house. But the plants are all scattered with a dusting of butterflies in various stages of life. They all will hatch as time allows them, and I am surprised that they spend more time in that chrysalis than I would expect. After all, hanging on a leaf just means you’ll get spotted and the leaf could get brought inside for an incomplete photography project.

The Japanese have many artistic traditions that we in the West are beginning to notice and take into account.

Of course we will get them wrong from time to time. A Minimalist aesthetic can be wonderful. Walking into a place that looks clean and polished where every fine detail is meticulously fussed over will immediately draw you in and have you pay deep attention to the space that isn’t used in comparison with the spaces that are used.

Then again, sometimes we get it wrong. The mass market plasticization of society and public spaces can simply look stark and uninviting. An Apple Store always seems cold and sterile to me instead of a place to draw you in and invite creativity. After all, that is what a computer is used for, to Create.

Maybe I am digging a bit too deep. My own wanders over my own patch of beach sand here never ceases to amaze me. Having grown up in the Prairies of South Jersey, I was used to a certain look and feel of things. My split level house of my youth was plucked out of a life of The Wonder Years. The Pin Oaks planted along the street would change with the seasons but were very much of the place and grew with the time.

Here things simply look different. I live in a town that will never freeze, or so I am told by the USDA and their zones. I have never seen it below 34, and it may not have been quite that cold since I am rather close to the beach. 3 Km or 2.3 Miles to be specific.

So things are not adapted to lose their leaves in winter. Flowers can occur all year around. If you like that sort of thing, and are observant, you can find beauty in just about anything.

My own yard for example. I find things that look like what the mother of a friend of mine called Wandering Jew. She told me that if the conditions are right, they will bloom. That sounded simply insane that a house plant would bloom like that to me since you just can’t leave things outside in the cold weather.

Here, it is a weed. And it blooms.

A tiny little dot of blue in the field of green at my feet. All I have to do is be patient and wait. In this case it was in late February, but no matter.

Other times, there’s a spot of yellow. Most likely from the shamrocks that grow in my yard, it could also be sorrel. Either way, these things are predictable. I almost always see them out there. Bright yellow or a pale lavender, they are in the sun, growing all over the place.

I have taken notice of them as they end up in my plant pots. How that happens, I have no idea. The flowers tend to be cut with the lawnmower, they reappear quickly, and they disappear.

Again, it blooms and brings beauty to a uniform green, if you know where to look.

That would be the key.

Open your eyes, pay attention. You could be missing something quite special.

I’m up at Stupid O’Clock. Even now that the time change happened, I’m still up at Stupid O’Clock.

You folks are doing something sensible like drooling into your pillow, snoring, and catching spiders with your mouth.

But no, I’m up around two hours before sunrise walking my dog.

This happens just about every day, rain or shine. I do try to wait out the storms since they usually are short and under a half hour, but normally I just soldier on through them.

How can you tell a tourist in South Florida?

They have Umbrellas!

We’ll also say they don’t know how to drive, but you’ll argue until you see it yourself. Really, folks, a sign that indicates “No U Turn” means the same down here as it does in Lexington, Kentucky, and Toronto Canada as it does here in Metro Fort Lauderdale.

Sheesh.

But I am out with Rack, the McNab SuperDog (TM) wandering around town. He’s watering palm trees and I’m on the look out for anything out of the ordinary.

I’m convinced I need to bring a pen knife to remove some stickers on public spaces, and a bottle of Acetone to wipe down the graffiti that some low lifes have decided to “decorate” light poles around town.

However, one thing popped up on the sidewalk the other day. We had a Halloween celebration last month. Great time for a party. Thousands of people enjoying being out together. Homes got decorated here, and some of them stayed decorated.

One of the balconies on Wilton Drive ended up with a laser display. These things showed up on the scene first a year or two ago. Put Stars on Your House! Home Laser Display! Amaze Your Friends.

For the most part they ended up looking somewhat weak because of the repetitive nature of the displays but it was a nice change of pace from the over done gaudiness of holiday displays.

People took them back in and put them in storage and even a few ended up at the thrift stores in January or February when nobody considered a need for them.

But Halloween? They’re just the ticket.

These folks put their display up and turned it on directly below their balcony. So at 5 AM, rain or shine, Rack and I walk through the red and green lasers and smile. They dance and make trails quickly on the ground for anyone to pass by.

Now, not having the right equipment to take a professional picture of them is actually a benefit in this case. You see if it was timed right, all I would end up would be a field of dots.

However the camera I used did not have a fast enough shutter in this case. Turned that display in to fireworks instead.

So if you’re in a light display, try it yourself. You never know where your picture will get an upgrade to Photography.

In my own case, that morning was until the time, unremarkable. I arrived at the university, had my 7:15AM Call with Purchasing to work over things that they had needed, and was settling in at my desk to get started.

The hallway was abuzz with very random activity, more like when you knock over a hornet’s nest than anything else.

I took my headphones off to get a clearer picture of what was going on, and went back to the routine.

I noticed that the internet was becoming quite slow. In a large university, the internet would run well until something major happened in that time and place. I was trying to hit the news site of the BBC, and it simply stopped loading.

My boss and my team crowded around asking me what was up when some people began to get details. The world had changed, and not for the better.